Wednesday Afternoon....

I don't really have much to say today, but am still having Blog-Tremens, it's been ages since I posted. So, I lured you in with that photo, taken a few years ago in Baltimore. Our running joke is "Friday Night Tease too." har har.

****

Thanks for all of your nice comments and emails and support about Brian's new life choice. I think things will be fine, and don't want you all to think that I'm not posting because I'm curled up in a hole somewhere. It's going to be tough, but there's also a sense of relief at natural order being restored here.

****

I've been in the studio this week, and it feels really GREAT to be there. I swear I could give up this job and paint paint paint for a living. Being "forced" to paint has really inspired me to get moving on the Artist's Against Aids projects. I have to have any finished projects turned in by April 24 (I think). Canvases are ready, and I am contemplating what will go on what, and in which style to work them.

I am also discussing with my boss the prospect of doing a 30-ft wide mural of a mexican street market. It will appear just as you walk in the door, so when you come to Champaign, you'll have to come see me and it.

****

My friend Rani is in town for one month, from Bangalore, India, to hang out with her son, Ilaiy. I am enjoying stealing her as much as I can, and eating as much of her amazing home cooking as I can. This is REAL food folks, stone-ground grains—yes, right there on the counter! Mortar and pestle, and piles of ginger and garlic and pepper. I wish you all could be here, it is heaven. HEAVEN, I say.

I have, so far, fed her jambalaya and apple crisp. I try to think up American cuisine that she won't likely find at an Indian McDonalds. She'd never heard of jambalaya, score 1 for me.

We are also have fun checking out the price of airline tickets and contemplating all we will do when I go to see HER. I'm not sure when this will happen, but I can hardly wait!

****

I have a new word that I don't know how I lived without:

Abulia: Loss or impairment of the ability to make decisions.

"What's for dinner?" "I don't know. I have abulia. I am abulic." I have used that word 10,000 times since I learned it a few weeks ago. Thanks go to coworker Gretchen, for sharing her word-a-day with me, when I was stewing over a work-related issue and said, "I am paralyzed with indecision."

That's all I have for today. Just wanted to say Hi, y'all!